If Destiny's Kind
by cityofmist
Summary: Canon AU: At the start of First Class, Erik manages to move the coin. As a result, his time with Shaw is substantially less traumatic, and also quite a bit longer.
1. Chapter 1

_1944_

* * *

><p>'Everything's fine,' she says. Her voice is shaking.<p>

The doctor is watching him. He holds the gun perfectly still, and he watches Erik; as if the weapon in his hand is a small thing, incidental; so utterly unimportant compared to what Erik can do.

Erik would love to think that the doctor is right.

The coin is so small. Erik thinks of the gates, the way he could _feel _them singing through him, and it was suddenly the obvious thing to do: to reach out his hands and _pull_ -

'Everything's fine,' his mother whispers.

'Three,' the doctor says, rolling his eyes, and the coin won't move, Erik pulls and pulls and tries to feel the metal again but _it won't move_, and the doctor's eyes are steel-hard in their resignation. And then something snaps inside Erik, just as there is a shot.

* * *

><p>It is disappointing, but perhaps this will teach the boy to try harder in future.<p>

Sebastian sighs, and then just as he pulls the trigger something yanks his hand to the side. The bullet narrowly misses hitting one of the guards in the shoulder, and Sebastian is vaguely aware that it strikes the back wall. The woman half-collapses, gasping in terror and shock, and the two guards holding her pull her back to her feet.

'_Fantastisch!_' Sebastian exclaims in genuine delight. The boy is breathing heavily and looks incredibly, pathetically confused by what he has just done, but before Sebastian can say anything else Erik closes his eyes and extends a hand again, only one this time.

The coin rises, jerkily, off the table; it hovers about four inches off the wood and stays there, wobbling slightly.

'_Ausgezeichnet_, _Erik!_' Sebastian says, grinning. '_Wirklich, fantastisch_ - '

He is interrupted by a _clink _as the coin abruptly drops to the table, and Erik visibly flinches; almost immediately and, Sebastian thinks, involuntarily he whips round to look at his mother, and then, pleadingly, back at him.

Theatrically, Sebastian puts down the gun, rolling his eyes. '_Beruhige dich, Erik,_' he says impatiently, and turns his attention to the two camp guards. '_Lassen uns ins Ruhe, bitte._' He looks the woman up and down - the bones of her face stand out, her clothes hang off her - and adds, '_Holen ihr etwas zu essen_.'

She goes quietly, attention fixed immovably on her son; her eyes follow him until the moment the door closes.

'_Es tut mir leid, Herr Doktor_,' Erik rushes, almost stuttering, the second the door is shut. '_Ich kann es wieder bewegen_ - '

'Beruhige _dich, Erik_,' Sebastian says again. '_Sie wird nicht verletzt werden_.' He smiles at the boy again - such a gift, if Sebastian can only help him control it; what a wonderful thing to have found, in this dull, muddy, quietly hellish place, this extraordinary talent! - and adds, '_Ich bin sehr stolz auf dich_.'

The boy bites his lip, and nods. The fear does not leave his face, but Sebastian is confident that, with time, it will.

* * *

><p>Erik has been given food and drink and a change of clothes. He has been shown to a small room where he slept for a few hours, sinking straight into a blank unconsciousness in a way he never has before. He has seen his mother again, briefly: she hugged him and sobbed and then, bracketing his face with her hands, she thanked him, over and over, for saving her.<p>

Erik remembers the way that the doctor looked at him when he pushed that gun to the side, when he lifted that coin from the table, as if this power made him more than ordinary, more than just an unremarkable child among the millions brought to this terrifying place. His mother has always told him that he is special, but she is looking at him now in a slightly different way.

It takes Erik a long time to figure out what the strange humming sensation is, the one that he can feel if he concentrates and looks for it and that, if he doesn't, goes away. When the guards come in and say that he has rested long enough and Doctor Schmidt wants to see him again, his eyes fall on the metal door handle, and he knows.

They take him to the same room as before, but this time a curtain has been drawn over the glass wall that Erik couldn't stand to look at even as he couldn't help but see what was behind it, the line he prayed he would never be made to cross.

The doctor is still smiling. 'Erik,' he says. 'How nice to see you. I trust you're feeling better?'

'Yes,' Erik says hesitantly. He pauses, and then adds, 'Thank you?'

The doctor grins. 'You're a very talented child, Erik,' he says. 'One in a million.'

'The metal,' Erik says quietly, because it seems to be what the doctor wants to hear. 'I can feel it.'

'You can do more than that, Erik,' the doctor says, chiding. 'You know that. Much more.'

There is an array of metal objects on the desk in front of him, neatly lined up in size order: paperclips, pens, a spherical steel paperweight, a metal tray full of papers. On the floor beside the desk, where the line ends, is a filing cabinet.

'What do you think you can do with these, Erik?' the doctor continues. The smile hasn't left his face, not once, but it isn't the flat, static, masklike smile that Erik has seen on too many faces; the doctor has an energy to him as if he can barely contain his enthusiasm.

If Erik closes his eyes and thinks of how it felt when he moved the gates, the gun, the coin, he can catch a glimpse of that same feeling in the objects in front of him. He is beginning to recognise and to like it, this feeling of metal: so strong, but with a strange flexible quality to it, as if with the right pressure it will bend to Erik's will.

Erik picks an object at random, a fountain pen, and he can feel the metal of the pen and it's all _there_, ready to move, if he can just…push…

Erik moves his hand unthinkingly as he sits there and thinks _up, move _up; he lifts it automatically a few inches off the table and _there, _the pen rises up in the air. Nothing is touching it, nothing is lifting it except for Erik and his power.

Erik looks at it, suspended over the table, and something like the doctor's excitement floods through him. This is Erik's power. This is what he was always meant to do.

Without thinking too hard about what he's doing Erik twists his fingers slightly and the cap clicks off the pen. He moves his hand downwards and the pen mirrors it, drops down to the paper lying in the tray to draw a long looping black scrawl over the doctor's papers: a random configuration of lines which Erik thinks with some work and some finesse might be persuaded to form a word.

He looks up, biting his lip, to see whether he has done the right thing.

He must have. The doctor is smiling.

* * *

><p>Sebastian thinks it would be prudent to leave Auschwitz as soon as possible. He will never gain Erik's trust if Erik sees too much of what has gone on here, what he will in his childish simplicity think Sebastian has condoned.<p>

Regrettable. It truly is. The brutality of which humans are capable is ceaselessly astounding, as if they are engaged in a constant effort to outdo their last moral atrocity with one even more impressive. Nazism, Sebastian thinks, will be a tough one to beat.

But ultimately it is not his concern. The victims and perpetrators are all of them alike in their inferiority to the new people coming; the sketchy line between Jew and Aryan will blur and disappear soon enough beside the clear delineations of Sebastian's master race.

He has got what he came to Auschwitz for, and far more: a talent beyond what he hoped for, with the potential to be second only to his own. Time to leave.

Perhaps it is also time, Sebastian thinks, that he got in touch with Azazel.

* * *

><p>'We're leaving this place,' the doctor tells him briskly. Erik has now been here for four days; he barely leaves his room except for the hours he spends with the doctor, who sits and watches as Erik makes everything from paperclips to furniture move around the room, or bends wire into new configurations, or aims and fires a gun without touching it. He is always delighted with every new skill Erik masters, but this pales in comparison to the feeling of Erik simply using this strange ability. It comes easily, now; the dam has broken and power is flooding out with a speed that surprises him. 'You're not safe in Poland.'<p>

Erik blinks. 'But, my mother - '

'I've made arrangements to have her transferred out of the camp.'

Erik has heard the word 'transferred' before. He can't leave if Mama has to stay here; he has to make the doctor save her. Surely the doctor can save her.

'No. No, _no_,' the doctor says quickly when he sees Erik's face. 'She'll be freed. She can come with us.'

'Where are we going?' Erik asks. His voice comes out as almost a whisper; something else, something more important, is caught in his throat. _We're leaving_. _She'll be freed_. The words are the most beautiful he has heard in a long time. Perhaps his whole life.

'We're looking for other people like you,' the doctor says. 'People who are gifted. I think we'll start in Argentina.'

_Gifted. _The word doesn't have the immediate, visceral relief that comes with 'free', but Erik turns it over in his head, the soft silver sound of it, and he thinks it's a label that, after so many others, he'll finally be glad to wear.

'Herr Doktor?' he says tentatively. He has been trying not to think about this, but he has a half-formed knowledge that if he doesn't ask this question now he never will, and he will never forgive himself.

'You don't have to call me that any more,' the doctor says cheerfully. 'I'm not a doctor and my name isn't Klaus Schmidt. That was a…a false identity, if you will, that I used to get in here and find you. My name is Sebastian Shaw.'

'Herr Shaw?' Erik tries. The man who is not a doctor, but who nevertheless saved him, nods for him to continue. Erik glances reflexively around. Outside these four walls, there are things happening that he doesn't want to think about, and, if not for the slightest chance, they would be happening to him. 'Why don't you…Why can't you save all of them?'

Herr Shaw, abruptly, is no longer smiling. 'I wish I could,' he says easily. 'But they're not like you, Erik.'

Erik says nothing. He knows what the man means, but a part of him which does not dare to speak is nevertheless convinced that these people are just like him; or rather, that he is just like them. Only luckier.

Herr Shaw reaches forward, and puts a hand on his shoulder: a gentle enough, but oddly weighted touch. 'One day, Erik,' he says, with a confidence which is hard not to believe, 'you will understand.'


	2. Chapter 2

_1960_

* * *

><p>There have been good parts. Erik knows that. Actually, the last sixteen years have had a lot of good in them. His life is comfortable, interesting, and worthwhile. It's not that he's unhappy.<p>

He's seen the world: first Argentina, and then more places than Erik can count. And there was meeting the others: Azazel (disconcerting, at first, to see someone so…_obvious_…in his difference, but it didn't take long to get used to it) and Emma (young and blonde and beautiful, and not a little intimidating; but she kept Shaw calm better than anyone else could when he was angry, and after the first time she saw Erik use his powers she suddenly spoke to him with a lot more respect) and Janos (refreshingly easygoing and, among all of what became the Hellfire Club, Erik's closest connection to 'normal'). Becoming a team, an easy unit with Shaw at its helm, driving ever onwards to the future. Their future.

Shaw set Erik's mother up in an apartment in Los Angeles, with money and a job, where he got to visit and see her living happy and normal in between travelling; and when in 1958 it became clear that there was nothing anyone could do about the cancer, Shaw let Erik go stay in California for a month, so he could be with her at the end.

Shaw set him free and gave him a life. Shaw took Erik and his power and made him what he is today. And Erik is beyond grateful. The trouble is that, with the Hellfire Club, there are also parts that aren't so good. Parts that leave a bad taste in Erik's mouth. And when he thinks back over sixteen years' worth of travelling and training and quietly, secretly fighting for this cause of theirs, these parts are always, for some reason, the first that come to mind.

* * *

><p>'Erik wants to leave,' Emma says without preamble as she walks into the room. Her lips are pressed to a narrow line. 'He's been considering it for a while. Just not overtly.'<p>

Sebastian takes another sip of his drink. 'Does he have a problem with his location, or his company?' he says coolly. 'I'm sure we could stand to move again - '

'He wants to leave _us_,' Emma says stiffly - this has always been her problem; she is as hard and inflexible as her diamonds. No scope for change. 'What do you propose we do?'

'Unless you think he's planning to suddenly flee in the night, I think I'm just going to wait and see,' Sebastian says, smiling.

'We can't afford to lose Erik.'

'I think you'll find we can't afford to have a member of our little team being forced to stay here against his will,' Sebastian says equably. 'He'd be a liability. I'm sure that whatever Erik thinks, he'll come to me of his own accord to discuss it.'

He watches Emma move across the room to the mirror that hangs on one wall. She leans over to smooth her hair. 'It's as if you don't even care,' she says coolly.

Sebastian shrugs.

* * *

><p>'I must admit I'm disappointed,' Shaw says, smoothing a hand through his hair. 'I've trained you. I've given you food and a home. I've given you a cause to fight for, Erik. I won't deny I'm curious as to what would prompt this change of views.'<p>

'I don't think I'm cut out for this kind of life,' Erik says steadily.

'What kind of life?'

'Agreeing with your goals is one thing, but…'

'You're not willing to fight for them?'

'I don't like murder,' Erik says bluntly. 'Or extortion. Or blackmail.'

'Lofty principles indeed,' Shaw says smoothly. 'If you don't believe that the future of our species justifies some short-term compromises…'

'I've played my part long enough,' Erik says. 'Sixteen years. Long enough.'

Sixteen years has been a long time. He has done enough for this cause of theirs.

The silence seems to stretch for a long time, and then eventually Shaw sighs. 'Then I suppose all I can do is hope we can part on amicable terms.'

Erik blinks; he hadn't expected such easy capitulation from a man who could, with an eye to generosity, be described as 'irascible'. Part of him is waiting for a catch. 'I think I'll go to Chicago,' he says cautiously: refuge in irrelevance.

'We'll miss your company, Erik,' Shaw says, examining a fingernail. It is, in some indefinable but unequivocal way, a dismissal; Erik nods politely and leaves the room. He'll go find Janos, Azazel and Emma, tell them he's going. He supposes that after sixteen years of working with the man, it's a little ridiculous that he was so nervous of having to tell Shaw; but, after sixteen years, there's still a part of him that insists on picturing the man with a coin on his desk and a gun in his hand.

* * *

><p>'You didn't even <em>try <em>to persuade him,' Emma says irritably as she sits down opposite Sebastian. 'I suppose we can write off all the _metal control _he might have done for us. I mean, I can't imagine a situation in which we might actually have reason to _miss _that.'

Sebastian rolls his eyes. 'Emma, my dear, you were listening. "I don't like murder, I've played my part long enough." I mean, really.'

'You could have - '

'He's grown weak, Emma,' Sebastian says with finality. 'We have no place for that here.' He sighs. 'I admit, it's a shame. The boy had such potential.'


	3. Chapter 3

_1962_

* * *

><p>Erik opens the door, and mentally sighs. A woman in a conservative black suit. Not smiling.<p>

On the positive side, she doesn't look likely to be selling anything, but nevertheless this does not look good. _If they've found me…_

Well. If they've found him, they know what he can do, and if they know that and they only sent one agent, they're idiots.

'I'm Agent Moira MacTaggert,' she says. _Damn_. 'I'm from the CIA,' _damn, damn, damn,_ 'and I'd like to speak to you. Could I come in?'

'And what do the CIA want from me, exactly?' Erik says evenly, ignoring the question and privately thinking that he'll bring the building down before he lets a CIA agent into his home.

'You are Erik Lehnsherr, aren't you?'

'Yes,' Erik says. He concentrates for a moment, cataloguing all the metal on her person. Not much. No gun. That's good, at least, but, God, why else would she _be _here?

'The CIA is organising a new division for people like you,' she says, and everything Erik was about to say gets stuck in his throat_._ 'With your…abilities. We already have several mutants working for us, including a telepath - '

'I don't know what you're talking about. Please leave.'

'Mr Lehnsherr, we have a _telepath_,' she says. 'We're aware of your powers. Nobody intends any harm to you. I'd really appreciate it if you'd be prepared to discuss this.'

'I have no interest whatsoever in joining the CIA,' Erik says icily. 'I would much appreciate it if you would _leave_.'

'Are you sure you wouldn't - '

Erik shuts the door in her face, irritably twists the mechanism of the lock and goes to find the phone. His landlord won't be happy to hear that he wants to leave at such short notice, but Erik has gone through this before; being singled out for something else, true, but this is the beginning of the same process. (A telepath working for _them_? Presumably that was how they found him. Why would anyone work against their own kind in that way?) He is taking no chances.

A mutant division of the CIA, he thinks. He doesn't know what strikes him more about it, the idiocy of the idea or the genuine danger it could present.

He still has a contact number for the Hellfire Club; he believes they're currently on the way to Russia, but then travel has never exactly been an issue. If the CIA and their mutants (whoever has so little loyalty to their species that they'd agree to work against it) truly represents a threat, Erik thinks, Shaw will want to deal with it himself.


End file.
